


It’s not a game

by Runespoor



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Absent Parents, Class Issues, Gen, Halloween, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:03:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2531690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halloween was always his favorite holiday. When else could he dress up as Robin and not be laughed at?</p>
            </blockquote>





	It’s not a game

Two years ago, his father had looked up from his newspaper and asked in a surprised tone if Tim wasn’t a bit too old for that. 

“Jack,” Janet Drake had sighed. “There’s plenty of young people dressing up for Halloween well into their twenties, and you have as much of a sweet tooth as any of them.”

Jack Drake had thought it over, and nodded. 

Tim hadn’t replied that plenty of his classmates went trick-or-treating for Halloween; things like that didn’t carry much weight in their household. Tim might be going to a select private school, but his parents made it clear they weren’t the same sort of people as the parents of most of his classmates. It was unfortunate that Bruce Wayne was their closest neighbor: idle and too uncouth to bear mentioning, he was the very type of person Jack and Janet were raising Tim not to be. 

The anthropological argument was better; Jack and Janet knew everything about rites of passage and the importance of culture.

He put away telling them what he wanted to dress up as until they left for a seminar in England. Chances were they wouldn’t remember that he’d already been Robin, but Tim preferred not to risk it. 

Not that he would be unable to give explanations: there were plenty that wouldn’t even need revealing his nightly outings. That wouldn’t even be lies. But he liked the option of keeping this for himself. It was different from discussions at school about whether Batman existed, or about those jokes about Robin. He didn’t like it, but he’d found that he could remove himself from the discussions easily enough. The others talked about Batman or Robin like characters in a moldy book, or hypotheses they posited like they were talking about vandalism down-town, or single moms living on welfare. 

This was his.

In truth, Tim had dressed up as Robin since the year he’d figured out who Robin was. 

Four times as the same – minor – character might have struck his parents as odd, but luckily they’d only been present for one Halloween since he turned nine; and he figured the hired help would have no reason to talk to them about it unless they asked, which they had no reason to, or to complain about him if he made unrealistic, bratty demands, which he was careful to avoid. He’d requested Robin costumes, respectfully, from Mrs. MacIlvenne the housekeeper, at a decent interval before the holiday so she could complete her sewing without throwing her schedule into turmoil.

He made sure to drop a word of it to his parents on the phone, knowing she would receive a bonus for it like she did when his birthday came around and there was a party to organize. Tim enjoyed the costumes more than the parties, at any rate.

This year, however, Tim chose to put his costume together himself. 

Wearing a Robin costume was always wonderful, but it never—maybe the best words for it were, it never felt real. Which was silly, and presumptuous to boot. Of course it wasn’t real. He liked seeing it, brand new bright colors, spread on his bed on the evening of Halloween, and he liked putting it on. It fit him perfectly; it’d been made for him.

But when he was in the streets, surrounding with other kids in their own costumes, he felt off. 

Like he was obviously a fake; or like he’d been trying to pass the real thing off as a mere costume. He wasn’t sure.

He didn’t know why. Perhaps because the true Robin suit was armoured (only lightly, but there _had_ to be some protection in the vest, and the cape, and obviously the gauntlets – not gloves, gauntlets). Perhaps because Bruce Wayne might be the richest man in Gotham, neither Dick nor Jason had had access to money before they came to Wayne Manor, and while of course Tim knew Bruce Wayne was the one who had the costumes made, including Robin’s, Tim couldn’t help thinking that Dick or Jason wouldn’t have made costumes of Robin with the same fabrics Tim’s suits used.

The end result wasn’t as good as what Mrs. MacIlvenne could have made. Tim learned how to use a sewing machine on his own, another secret, and he wasn’t as agile with his fingers as would have been best. His hands were too small to properly operate the buttons: he had to be careful, go slowly, let go of the fabric to if he wanted to stop the machine.

It took longer than he thought, and it didn’t look as realistic as the others: the green short-shorts came from a summer Bermuda shorts he’d chopped, and the vest had been two old sweat-shirts in another life, painstakingly cut down and put back together like a puzzle. He hesitated over the shoes, but in the end he dyed gymnastic shoes green, wasting an afternoon and throwing the towel he’d used away before Mrs. MacIlvenne saw. 

It was _authentic_ ; something like Dick or Jason could have thrown together. 

The mask was the easiest.

On the night of Halloween, Tim snuck out of the house like he did on most other nights, slipping past Mrs MacIlvenne unnoticed. She’d be unhappy with him later, he should have let her know when he left. He’d deal with that later. He only wanted—

In Gotham, among all the colors and the skins and the lights, snickering long-toothed teens with suspicious-looking satchels, girls in skimpy outfits – bunny, nurse, devil, short skirts and eyepowder – and their astronaut or James Bond boyfriends, flocks of impish children, and the half-dozen gothic Batmen swarming the streets, Tim breathed in. Out.

His heart was beating too loud and he felt alive.


End file.
